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Her guides had vanished

Exhaustion overwhelainst the wall, snuffed out the red sparks on the fraying end of the rope In complete darkness she rested, and ate, and considered her situation If she kept her mind busy, she would not panic

A labyrinth lay beneath the Heart-of-the-World’s-Beginning, as complex a network of pathways as the ones woken within any woven crown It was, she supposed, like the earth’s equivalent to the network that existed in some manner in the aether, to which she had had access when she had walked through the burning stone, which was both crossroads and gateway Somehohen it existed in exile in the aether, the Ashioi land had become intertwined within these aetherical pathways; that hen she had wandered in the mist of the borderlands with Eldest Uncle’s rope tied around her, she had eed on distant hills and in unknown ions of Ashioi country, places she ht otherwise only reach by many days or weeks travel on foot

Yet this world below the world was not simply a trap of closed tunnels The air she breathed was not stale, although it was a little dusty and so here she could recognize, nothing farandmothers The sides of the tunnels ran slick beneath her hand; she could not iine what kind of stone this was, or how these roads had been carved out of the rock Where the knife’s edge had cut off the land in ancient days she found debris That was the old side, the lands that had remained on Earth after the first cataclysm Where the creatures led her, beneath Ashioi country, the labyrinth was revealed as a sterile place see sounded behind her, a warning or a welcome She scooted up, breathed fire onto the end of the rope, and turned as the air around her lightened from an unseen source She waited; she even held her breath, notto

A creature shuffled into view Its skin shone with the glarowths very like the stunted stalago in a cave in Andalla where she had pluuide and her inquisitive father Had they descended farther, in that Andallan cave, would they have found a long-forgotten entrance to the great labyrinth? Did the maze weave its interlace below the entire land of Novaria?

Bulges marked the creature’s face where eyes should be Move and shredding of clouds It wore a necklace of htly when it halted Wound around one arhtly

"I am called Liath," she said "I pray you, friend, help me find my way out of here I intend no harm to you and your people"

It shuffled past as if it had not seen or heard her, but as she turned to follow, she realized hersideways

She followed it down the right-hand branching, which proved no easy task Despite its aard gait it covered the ground efficiently She walked briskly to keep up Fortunately, the floor remained so level that even in blackness she would not have fallen The ceiling was too high for her to touch, but Sanglant ers Four or five woon ently curved where it did not push straight on

Stairs opened beneath her feet, spanning half the corridor while the other half continued a level course onward Following Pewter Skin, she descended The creature took a turning and caular chamber that three corridors opened off She paused to lay a marker of rock slivers so she could, if necessary, find her way back to that second set of stairs Although she hurried to catch up, this new tunnel branched at sudden and aard intervals, without benefit of geo she lost track of her guide except for the fading niht dissolved

She was alone, trapped, lost Abandoned

She padded forith a sick feeling in her sto her skin Deep in the earth, with no way out, no recourse She could never find a way hoh

The tunnel jinked three times within a short stretch She blinked in surprise as she eed into a broad, oval cave with an unco, not quite so low that she had to stoop but low enough that she kept ducking anyway

The walls of the chamber were pricked with holes that had a dia and, between collections of holes, were riddled with alcoves stuck off at odd angles The floor extended, on the level and on all sides, about ten steps inward before sinking steeply into a large, central hollow A still pool marked the center of the hollow This basin was filled hat ht have been water but which seemed to her eye too brilliant and too hard, for it cast outward a blue incandescence as if a strong light burned in its depths